Saturday, 22 December 2007

My City Councilor is posing as the champion of the Library that he, with the help of our Mayor and a few others on Council, has systematically sought to dismantle. He's counting on the public's memory being short. It is. When the Library is dead and gone he'll be remembered as the scrappy dude who tried to save it, not the guy who was pounding the nails in the Libary's coffin all along. Read the article:

Wednesday, 12 December 2007

What has our City Council got against the children and the less fortunate in our city? They are cutting $800,000 dollars out of the budget for the public Library, foolishly suggesting that service won't be affected. Horse crap. There's books in that there Library that explain economics, if any of our City Councilors had Library cards. (Word is the two councilors on the Library Board had no record of holding library cards until they were issued with their orientation packages.) But secondly, City Council is considering cutting out crossing guards. Well and good if mommy or daddy drives precious the two kilometres from home to school, not so good if the child has to walk. Not so good to the soon to be unemployed crossing guards. Not so good to the families about to lose a second income - the difference between paying for a school trip for some, of avoiding a trip to the food bank for others. Again - the marginalized pay the price while the wealthy enjoy stable property taxes and complain that the city is going to hell in a handbasket.

By the way - when was the last time anyone heard our Mayor or any of the Councilors stand up and say anything in defense of the poor, the marginalized, the lowly?

Monday, 3 December 2007

My Ward Councilor has been in office for well over a decade. He's part of the problem, or the solution, depending on where you stand. He is also a major muck-raker, sort of a self-declared official opposition. It brings progress to a dead stop, since the only thing he can do is to argue against everything. And to justify it all, he writes a column about, well, himself in the local magrag. When he doesn't write about himself, he criticizes others without the burden of research or proof. The only editorialist assigned to the City Hall beat is his best friend - they have an annual retreat in the backwoods of Northern Ontario, after which the columnist routinely endorses his best friend and declares a conflict at the same time. It might not be brokeback, but it needs fixing. My councilor is the government, the opposition, and the fifth estate. And he just keeps getting elected. The guy actually votes in favour of something on Monday night, blogs against it on Tuesday, and takes his fellow councillors to task on Wednesday, deposits a paycheque on Thursday, publishes on a Friday and squats on 26 different committees in his spare time from either side of the same fence.

Sunday, 2 December 2007

The local rag reports that the CEO of my Credit Union he has played the top 100 golf courses in the world. Once upon a time in a simpler, albeit fictional time, George Bailey never left his little town. Our Credit Union boss never comes home, apparently. It truly is a Wonderful Life, for some.